By Walter Agnew Moore II
Date: Fri, 29 May 2003

I bonded with my class of kids yesterday. It was a two step process. First, it transpired that their favorite cartoon was Daria. Then I demonstrated how, by leaving my radio on all the time, I had memorized all the latest Mexican cheez-pop songs, including this annoying sing-song dance track that translates roughly as "You're so fat. You eat too much. You're so fat..."

Now we are working off of mutual respect.

I have two favorite pairs of shoes, some boots that are 8 years old and were splitting open on the sides, and a 15-year-old pair of black army dress shoes that look like something Agent Smith would wear, and that had the heels coming off of them.

I asked Laura the secretary where a shoe repair place was, and she gave me detailed directions to a blue house not far from the school.

There were an amazing number of blue houses on that block. After about four drive-bys looking for some kind of sign, I took to creeping along in first gear holding up a shoe through the open top of the Tracker. A guy made eye contact, and I was in.

He fixed both pairs in one day and charged me 20 pesos. That is the cost of one beer in an up-scale bar here. Solid work too.

That seems to be the rule of thumb here. If your only experience of Mexico is guys at the border trying to sell you pills, come on down.

I got my car's oil changed in a clean little shop for 15 bucks. You could stand around by the car and see everything the guy was doing. He was careful and thorough. I asked him to check the air filter too, and he did, then put it back and said it was fine. No extra charge. The dude has got all my business now, I'm going to get him to do a tune-up on the Tracker for 40 dollars when pay-day gets here.

And pay-day is tomorrow.